Tuesday, May 31, 2011

The Search For Hills

As the month of May (my favorite month of the year, BTW) comes to a close I find myself preparing for the 18-week marathon training cycle that will start in just two weeks. As such, I am also beginning to try and find new routes which include some hills so that I can incorporate more inclines and declines in my training. Today was a case of me trying to find some hilly streets in the local area and it was OK. I felt like I was running downhill more than uphill, but I realize that is actually impossible given that I started and finished in the same spot. Nevertheless, I meandered through some neighbourhoods that were new to me and had a good 10.3km run (5:00/km, 8:03/mile average pace). I also saw lots of other runners out and about. That's always a good thing. I think the Winter hibernation is over for sure. They are calling for a high of +31C which will feel like +41C today. That's hot! And I love it. As for the hills, I found a few small ones and will need to keep searching for more:



As for the month of May, it was a good month to say the least. Two personal records, one in the 10K while training for another in the Half Marathon followed by a trip to Aruba! Yes, it's been a good month and I am sad to see it go. Here's hoping June is just as good, although I know it won't include Aruba.

The stats for May are as follows:

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Sunday, May 29, 2011

Very Impressive

This morning my youngest son surprised the heck out of me! He'd been asking to go for a run with me the last couple of days and this morning I was able to oblige. We drove Owen across town to his baseball practice and then were going to drop Malks off at my Dad's while I was supposed to run home. Instead, I couldn't say no when Malks asked if we could run together to his Grandfather's house. I figured he'd give up after a few hundred metres, maybe a kilometre at most. But he ran the entire way and completed 4km at a good steady pace! Amazing stuff. He was very proud of himself, but not as proud as his parents were of him.

I then ran a bit of a roundabout route on the was home for an additional 13.4km to complete 17.4km on the day. Although I ran a lot faster on my portion (4:59/km average pace, 8:01/mile) I did not have nearly as much fun as I did when running with Malcolm. What a terrific training partner!

I think he had fun also. And in the end that's the most important part.

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Saturday, May 28, 2011

Toronto GoodLife Half Marathon Photos

This morning, with a bit of hesitation, I ran 8km despite the fact that my legs are SUPER sore. So much for recovery weeks I guess. I don't know why they are so sore, but they are and that's that. The route was a bit funky and my pace improved throughout even though I concentrated on keeping it very loose and easy. Overall it ended up being a good run.

Then I finally managed to track down the race photos from the Half Marathon I ran two weeks ago. I thought I'd put them up here for posterity. They're not particularly exciting, and I don't know what the Hell my hair was doing at the end. Also, it's good to see the thumbs were out in full force while I was running...





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Friday, May 27, 2011

This Week's Theme: Keep on Truckin'

Well, it's Friday and I've made it through the short 4-day week (almost) post-Aruba pretty well intact, but a bit out of sorts. It's been really tough getting back into anything resembling a routine, but I have been running despite my brain not function at it's normal below average levels. My forgetfulness has reached an all time high as I keep leaving things that I need at work back at home, things I need to take home back at the office, and on and on.

Anyway, I'm sure things will settle down eventually. Meanwhile, at least I have lots of sunset photos in my desktop background rotation. Here's one that you can feel free to use:


As for the running recap, here's how the first week back home has been going:

Monday was a totally "off" day as we arrived from Aruba at 2:30am and were woken up by the younger loin-fruit at 6:00am. No running (as usual), and no weights.

Tuesday I slept through my alarm and only had time for an easy 5km jaunt. It was OK, I suppose. In the evening I was able to run again and did a couple of loops around Withrow Park to include a bit of hills after dropping Malks off at Beavers. The total was 6km and I ran it a bit faster than I probably should have, but it was fun. In between I managed to fit in a chest and arms routine at the gym over my lunch hour.

Wednesday I woke up on time after a rather poor night of sleep and ran my typical 8.5km route. It felt better than my recent runs and I was happy to have done it. At lunch I hit the gym for a back and shoulder workout. My left shoulder/collar bone has been bothering me for a few weeks now so I kept things light and actually felt a bit better afterward. Use it or lose it, I always say...

Thursday was a no running day (or so I thought) so I did leg weights at the gym. I kept it really light since I haven't been doing weights in a few weeks and it was OK, but I definitely felt it. On my last set of lunges my left quad nearly cramped up so I backed off of those and continued with the rest of my routine. Then, after I learned that Owen's baseball game for the evening was going to be cancelled due to rain, I took the boys to the track and ran a total of 5km mostly in 400m repetitions after the first 1.4km section where I ran from home to the school.

Friday (today) I got up just before 6am and had just enough time to run the same 8.5km route that I did on Wednesday. It was slower and a bit more creaky on account of the leg weights, but I felt better at the end than the beginning. My legs are not feeling all that hot despite the fact that I've backed off on the mileage so I have to be careful to let them fully recover prior to digging into marathon training in mid-June. This afternoon I'll be back at the gym for some upper body weights of some sort.

Have a great weekend!

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Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Toronto GoodLife Half Marathon 2011 Race Report

Where do I begin? How can I even remember what the race was like given that almost immediately after finishing I jumped on an airplane bound for Aruba where I spent a week enjoying quite possibly the best vacation of my entire life? I do know that I went from 8C and rainy to 30C and tropical in the same day. I also know that I not only met my A goal (1hr35m) for the race, but also that I managed to sneak under my Dream goal (1hr33m19s) in the process and ended up PR'ing by 9m31s.

But where do I start...

Oh yeah, first a picture of the typical way I spent my evenings in Aruba:


Yes, it was spectacular on all counts and everyone should go if you haven't already...

But this is a race report, right?

Crap, I keep losing focus. Good thing I was able to maintain that in the race. From what I remember, Monica dropped me off near the Start at about 7:45am for the 8am start. It was windy, cold, and rainy. I wore a garbage bag over my t-shirt and a throw away hoodie on top of that. I was still cold. This was a relatively small race (4070 total participants) and so I was able to easily find my way to the front section. Upon getting there I noticed that the sign indicating where the 1hr35m runners should line up was behind me and so I moved back to stand right beside the goal time that I wanted to run. I looked hard for the 1:35 pace bunny, but he/she never showed. The 1:30 pace bunny was beside me and I almost had a notion to follow that group, but in the end I decided that it would be ridiculous to try and so never even bothered trying.

Anyway, the race started and I trotted off at a nice easy pace after discarding both the hoodie and the garbage bag. The running felt much more difficult than it should have and I was immediately worried that this would not be my day. However, I made an effort to not let that bother me and just tried to stay relaxed, checking my Garmin once in a while to make sure that I was neither going too slow nor too fast.

The course for the first two thirds has a lot of downhill sections and I knew that this would be the time to try and gain some ground on my goal time given that the last third is uphill. I was running at 4:22/km average pace and started to feel a bit better after a few kilometres. One of my splits was 4:01 and that had me a bit concerned, but it was downhill so I went with it.

Then, between 4km and 5km there is a big long hill called Hog's Hollow. I could see it looming in front of me and it definitely looked daunting. The entire way up I just concentrated on keeping the same effort level as I had on the flats and downhills and trying not to care about my pace. In the end I passed lots of people who were struggling on the incline and managed a 4:45 split. This was good and I knew that the toughest part of the course was over. OR SO I THOUGHT!!!

The running for the next ten kilometres went well. I walked through a bunch of water stops, but my average pace remained between 4:20/km and 4:22/km. In the back of my head I knew that 4:30/km pace was very likely to get me my 1hr35m goal time, but I also was still hopeful that I could manage 4:25/km pace overall and sneak under my dream goal of 1:33:19. That goal came from my 10K race two weeks previous and based on McMillan Running Calculator. I knew it was aggressive, but I wanted a good challenge given that this was my goal race for the Spring and that I was heading straight into a week of lounging at the beach in Aruba. So I kept on chugging along.

Monica and Owen popped up along Yonge at what I seem to remember was the 6km mark, and then again at the start of Rosedale Valley Road at about 13km. I threw my baseball hat to Owen as my head was feeling like it was trapping a lot of heat and kept on running.

Then, the one thing I did NOT anticipate happening happened. Right at the 15km mark, after all the downhills were behind me, my left calf twinged and almost completely cramped. Oh CRAP! I thought to myself. I really had a moment there where I felt like my whole race was going to be ruined.

I quickly decided that a defeatist attitude would get me nowhere and focused on maintaining a form that would protect the calf. From that point on it was a real battle. Every time I felt a bit better and picked up the pace the calf would start to seize up and I'd have to back off. The last 4K up hill was really tough not only because I was pretty well spent by then, and not just because it was straight into the wind, but also because it's very difficult to run uphill without pushing off with one's calf muscles!

Anyway, the kilometre markers were coming way too slowly for my liking. The 20km mark took forever! But when I passed the 20km mark I finally was convinced that 1hr35m was in the bag. I had no idea if I was even close to 1hr33m19s and was just hoping at this point to break 1hr34m.

The last section was tough, but I did manage to sprint a bit once I could see the Finish line. And thank goodness I did! Had I not done that I would likely have missed my Dream goal by mere seconds and would have boarded the plane to Aruba a bit disappointed.

Instead, the result was a great send off.

And Aruba was a great prize. I can't wait to go back, though I know it won't be anytime soon.

Lastly, I ran 5 times on the Island and it was slow, hot, easy, and fun. When I went running this morning here in the City all I could think to myself was, "Where's the Ocean?!"

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Sunday, May 15, 2011

Big PR in the Half!

In line to check in at the airport. Left calf is tight like whatever metaphor you'd like to put in here. But I finished the Half, struggled after 15km with a calf cramp issue, and still managed to get under my A goal of 1hr35m. In fact, I snuck under my Dream goal of 1hr33m19s:

Final Chip Time: 1:33:15.0
Overall Place: 157/4070 (top 3.9%)
Category Place: 21/290 (top 7.2%)
Gender Place: 138/1814 (top 7.6%)

Now off to Aruba for some much needed R&R.

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Friday, May 13, 2011

Best Race Kit Swag EVER!

Today I picked up my race kit for the Toronto GoodLife Marathon, with yours truly running the Half version. Inside the bag were goodies previously unseen, a really low count of useless flyers and ads, a great tech t-shirt devoid of advertising save for the title sponsor, and a good re-usable grocery shopping bag to house it all.

The highlights:
And the big one...

Amazing. It's almost worth registering and NOT running the race...

Anyway, to update my running for the week since Wednesday morning as I prep for this coming Sunday and its predicted deluge of rain and wind:

I ran 7km on Thursday, portions of which were done with the boys at the local High School track. I ran 400m intervals typically pretty relaxed with Owen, taking short breaks between each lap, and while he was resting I did a few at my planned pace for the HM (4:30/km or below) and managed to find them rather easy, which I can only take as a good sign. The aches and pains are still there, but the heel was somewhat better. The left shoulder I'm not really worried about since it doesn't bother me when I'm running anyway. With running to school to pick up the boys and then running home after Monica picked them up with the car the total was a bit more than I'd intended, but it felt good so I went with it.

This morning I had a bit of trouble getting up to go run, but projecting into the future I knew that with Owen's baseball game this evening, and having volunteered to do the score keeping, I had to run before work or miss it entirely. In the end it was pretty good even if a bit slow. I managed my usual 8.5km.

This weekend is looking rather wet and nasty, but I am planning to run a short recovery distance tomorrow no matter what. On Sunday it's race time, with the current forecast calling for constant rain and brisk winds from the NE it may be challenging to say the least. At least the temperatures look better than previously thought: now they're calling for a low of 8C and a high of 12C, right in that good running range in dry weather anyway. It may be freezing with the rain!

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Wednesday, May 11, 2011

A Short Turnaround

Why is it that in the lead up to a race, and in particular one that you'd really like to perform well, all sort of creaks and aches and pains come out of the woodwork and then, shortly after the deed is done, disappear? I've never had so many little nagging issues all at once as I prepare for my Half Marathon this coming Sunday!

My right heel is hurting!
My left hamstring is tight and sore!
My left shoulder throbs!
And my left collar bone snap, crackles, and pops every time I move and, yes, it too hurts!

Anyway, I can't explain it, but am trying my best to not let it bother me.

That being said, I did not have any particularly inspiring runs to help ease the mental unease either yesterday or today. Both mornings I ran the same route for 8.5km each. On Tuesday I felt tired, sore, and that's when my heel issue popped up. I still ran at a decent pace, but it was not exactly "good", just maybe tolerable.

Then this morning the same run felt much much worse! I ran slow, my heel and hamstring issues continued unabated, and I had real trouble coming up with a good reason for why I was doing this training run in the first place.

Maybe the lack of sleep in the last little bit is the culprit. Case in point, Owen's first official baseball game of the season was last night and took place way on the other side of town. The team played great while the spectators froze in the chilly wind, winning 6-2 largely due to some stellar base running. But it didn't finish until 9pm, which meant we weren't home until almost 10pm. By the time I was in bed it was coming up on midnight and my five hours of sleep were definitely inadequate. I had intended to go for a 12-15km run, but dragging my ass out of bed took so long that I only had time for the aforementioned 8.5.

In other news, and the reason behind my title for this post, this Sunday will prove to be rather crammed and busy. After completing the Half Marathon (assuming I complete it fast enough for all this to work out) I will have just enough time to go home, shower, change, and then head to the airport where my wife and I will be boarding a plane for Aruba to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary! Tight legs will only get tighter while I sit my 6'4" frame in ecomony class for 5 solid hours, but to Hell with it!

It will be a welcome break and I am very much looking forward to it. I may even stop running for the whole week while I eat, drink, sleep, swim, drink, kayak, drink, eat, sleep, and so on and so forth...

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Monday, May 9, 2011

Entering Go Time

This week is all about holding back, resting, waiting to spring forth onto the Half Marathon to be. It's almost Go Time for the Goal Race of the Spring.

Yesterday, I finished off the past week with a solid run that was all about the above theme as I tried to hold back as much as possible while questioning whether I was actually holding back enough. As I ran what ended up being 10 miles  (16.1km) in a decent 1:19:36 for a faster than usual 4:56/km (7:56/mile) average pace (with most of my splits in the 4:40's, or 7:30's per mile) I wondered if I was leaving a bit too much out on the training run. Then, at around the halfway point, a cyclist wheeled up beside me and we proceeded to have a conversation that lasted several minutes. He asked lots of questions about my training, commented on my lack of heel striking, and that sort of thing. Once he went off on his bike ride I figured I'd passed the "talk test" and carried on as before. The only part of the run that was taxing was the climb out of the Valley up Pottery Road. Other than that, everything felt pretty good! I finished off the run with a 4:28 split and bought some flowers for my lovely wife to celebrate Mother's Day.

Today the theme continues with no working out whatsoever! To make sure I'd keep this promise I did NOT bring my workout gear with me to the office. I am NOT going to the gym to do leg weights, and I am NOT replacing that with something else. It helps that my left collar bone/shoulder is sore for some mysterious reason or I might have done upper body stuff despite promising myself that I would use this week to rest. I don't know what happened, but the joint where the collar bone inserts near the neck is very sore and swollen. I must have tweaked it doing weights on Friday or slept on it wrong. It doesn't impede my running so I'm not too worried about it.

It's tough for me, but I am telling myself that there is nothing I can do this week to increase my fitness for race day. The work has been done. It's time to rest and give it all when the time comes.

With that in mind I drove the first section of the HM race course yesterday just to see the one decent climb that we will have to traverse and to vaccinate any potential nasty surprises. Indeed, the hill occurring between 3-4km in the race is long (600m-700m) and never lets up, but it's not super steep, at least not from what I could see inside the car as we drove up. I will have to contend myself with running a good pace while trying to keep the appropriate level of perceived effort in this section or I might pay for it in the end. I've been told that the long downhill section on Rosedale Valley Road is what gets a lot of people as it tears at the quads. For some reason I am not worried at all about that and figure it will actually be fun to run downhill for a long stretch and, in theory, maintain pace whithout working all that hard. The last 2km of the race is also uphill, but nothing really worth noting as far as grade goes. Besides, it's just a half marathon.

Anyway, I will think a bit more about my goals for this race and will likely put those out here on the blog before the end of the week. But right now I am feeling fairly confident that I will have a great race!

As long as I don't over do it on my runs this week...

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Saturday, May 7, 2011

The Week That Was

It's been very busy for me this week as Owen's baseball really ramps up at the beginning of the season and stuff at work is very much "going on". On top of my regular duties, I was attending a Conference on Thursday and Friday while studying for an exam that I ended up writing on Friday evening. I'll find out in 4-5 weeks if I passed and can add more letters to the end of my name in acronym form...

On the running front things have been going smoothly. I am looking forward very much toward a great Half Marathon on the 15th and have kept my runs fairly even and easy with a bit of a taper in mind. I've also cut out one leg weight training session this week (in part because of the Conference) and will likely not do any leg weights next week leading into the race.

For the sake of brevity, and because I have another baseball game to go coach, here's the week that was (although I realize my week won't actually end until tomorrow when I will be going something in the 14-16km range long run):


And lastly, I turned 37 this week. Not that big a deal since I didn't cross into another age-group and my BQ did not get easier...

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Monday, May 2, 2011

Sporting Life 10K Race Report and April Summary

Given that this race was a training run more than a PR chase I have no pics to share, but I did have a lot of fun anyway! I woke up after a pretty bad night of sleep (this is starting to sound like a broken record, eh?) and was off and running at 6:45am on my way to the Start for the race. I decided to run there because, as stated, this was not a goal race, and I didn't feel right waking up the family just to get a ride in the car. I ran nice and slow, wore a used jacket I'd picked up the day before at a Thrift Store, and had a nice warm up in the process. The distance to almost the Start Line ended up being 6.5km.

I arrived quite a bit earlier than I'd intended (about 7:20am for the 8am start) and so I decided to stand in line for the Porta Potties just in case. The line was massive and I guess they had placed the facilities in different locations to accommodate the different corrals. The last time I ran this race all of the toilets were lined up in one location. Anyway, all the people waiting in line were from more than just the corrals that were next to the Porta Potties and things were not moving very quickly.

At 7:45am, when the PA announcer said all runners had to be in their proper corrals, I wasn't even close to getting into a Porta Potty. I didn't really need to go, it was a "just in case" thing, and so I got out of the line and went to line up in my corral.

As I stood there getting a bit colder than I really wanted to be I started getting a bit worried that I would tighten up too much to run my planned pace (4:17-4:24/km for a finish between 42:50 and 44:00). I wore shorts and a t-shirt, keeping that used jacket on until the very last minute. But my legs, and calves in particular, were getting really cold!

Anyway, the weather was actually ideal - about 10C (50F) with a clear sky and not too much wind. I was ready to run and couldn't wait for the start. Then the time was suddenly upon us and we were running!

Given how my Garmin got screwed up two years ago in this race (measuring more than 600m longer than the course) I was wearing my old Timex and planned on taking splits on that watch as a back up while the Garmin did the auto lap thing. I was a bit concerned that I'd miss the markers, but in the end I hit all of them right on except the 7km marker because it had fallen down. (I was about five seconds late on that one, so no big deal.)

There's not much to say about the run itself other than I tried to hold back for most of it and failed miserably for the most part. This course is mostly downhill and it felt easier to just let things go rather than try and brake with each step. In the process I not only set a new PR for the 10K, but I also broke my 5K personal best not once, but twice! (Unofficially, of course.)

Here are the splits from my Timex, which add up to a few seconds more than the final Chip Time, but I don't know whether I started it early, stopped it late, or both:

1. 4:27.31
2. 4:11.19
3. 4:15.54
4. 4:03.96
5. 4:20.26 (5K split - 21:19.26 and PR #1!)
6. 4:08.33
7. 4:15.93
8. 4:16.23
9. 4:19.57
10. 3:48.69 (5K split - 20:48.85 and PR #2!)

The totals are on my last post, but it's nice to be able to report that I managed to PR by almost 3 minutes on the same course! Had I been aware that I was that close to breaking 42 minutes (final time was 42:04.2) I would have probably gone ahead and done it. The last split was fast only because for most of the race there was this lady who kept passing me, then slowing down, then passing me. She had a strange running form which made her look like she was running on wooden legs and the fact that she kept slowing down right after she placed herself directly in my path started to really irritate me. As she passed on in the last 200m I all of a sudden decided that I didn't want her slowing me down on the home stretch and I put on a burst of speed. I actually surprised myself with how much I was able to speed up. As I said before, I was holding back almost the entire race and I guess that explains it. Although it was a tiring run, like a good steady state of tempo run should be, I know that I can go faster and that is a good confidence booster.

Also, even though I was taking my splits on the Timex I really had no idea what my average pace was. There were so many runners around, and so many pot holes to navigate, that I never actually got into any sort of running groove where I could think about that kind of stuff and do the numbers in my head to figure out how fast I was running. I suppose that's not a bad thing or I might have slowed down even more to get into that 42:50 - 44:00 space that I'd intended to finish in.

Oh well. A bit too fast in the end, but I'll take it! Afterward I was picked up by my lovely wife and oldest son, who brought me a dry t-shirt and sweatshirt so that I wouldn't freeze, and we were off for a busy day of baseball practices and celebrating my Mom's Birthday! All in all, a terrific day.

As far as April goes, I'll just post a screen shot from Garmin Connect and say that it was my second highest monthly mileage ever:


May will be a bit of a race/recovery month if all goes well. In two weeks I am running my Spring goal race, the Toronto GoodLife Half Marathon, and really want to do well there. After that I think I will give my legs some time to recuperate before diving into marathon training in early June.

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Sunday, May 1, 2011

Sporting Life 10K Race Update

Ran to the race (6.5km), stood around getting a bit cold for over a half hour, then had a really good training run type race and finished with a big PR!
Report to come. Final stats are as follows:

Gun Time: 42:35.4
Chip Time: 42:04.2
Pace (Chip): 4:12/km (6:46/mile)
Overall: 524/12157
Gender: 442/5217
Category: 69/736

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